Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
I know I like combos…but I also know I like games that create tension right from the jump.
Rajas of the Ganges, designed by Inka & Markus Brand and published in 2017, is a fantastic dice-driven worker placement game that ranks in the top 200 on BGG. It plays pretty quickly and features players in the role of nobles attempting to build a successful province with tiles purchased with the value of pips in various colors. At the same time, you’ll be doing a bunch of, well, “Eurogame” things like advancing on tracks and using powers based on the board’s many action spaces.
Easy to teach, with a format that scales well to its player count, I never had a game of Rajas of the Ganges that lasted longer than about 90 minutes even at the maximum player count of four.
In a world where it feels like almost every major strategy game release of the last 10 years has gotten a lighter, shorter, and/or two-player-only version of its source material, I can’t pretend that I was shocked when I learned that Rajas of the Ganges got a quick-playing card variant. (The system already has a roll-and-write variant, Rajas of the Ganges: The Dice Charmers.)
While I am generally a skeptic of streamlined versions, my experience with Pirates of Maracaibo (2024, Capstone Games) really opened my eyes. The combos, the combat, the card play—that game took the best parts of the base Maracaibo experience and turned a two-, sometimes three-hour game into a very slick one-hour game that still checks all the boxes.
Enter Rajas of the Ganges: Cards & Karma (2024, R&R Games). Designed, like the base game, by Inka & Markus Brand, Cards & Karma has some of what makes the base game so good, with turns that create a tiny river of combos. It also has a slick way of turning the base game’s dice selection mechanic into a card game, by featuring double-sided cards showing a die color on one side but not the number of pips that are hidden on the back, so you are really “rolling the dice” by selecting a card from the market to take a turn.
The real win is the game’s scoring system. Rajas of the Ganges: Cards & Karma is a race to flip six scoring cards before opponents do the same thing, and because of those juicy combos, the end of each play has been a fantastic photo finish.
The Administrator
Rajas of the Ganges: Cards & Karma refers to itself as a 30-to-45-minute card game, a timeframe that matches all my plays as well. On a turn, players take one of five actions to build their tableau, aligned with the actions of the base game, like selecting dice from an action pool, placing buildings and ship cards in a personal tableau, or gathering goods to exchange them for coins.
The game is driven by a card grid, scaled to player count, where players take all their actions by selecting one of the action cards in the display. Each card is two-sided, with actions on one side and dice on the other. When in hand, the cards are dice, and while other players can tell what color those dice are, they don’t know the pip value. (Of course, when selecting cards to become dice in hand, players don’t know the value either, creating an interesting decision point when attempting to gather cards in the same dice color.)
So, if a player wants to build a building from the display, they have to pay cards from their hand as dice matching or exceeding the pip value and die color showing on those cards. Other action cards require a specific pip value (regardless of color) on a dice card, such as the ones needed to build ships or trigger actions with the advisors in the display. The goods cards are free, so those can be added to a player’s tableau even if they are out of dice cards.
Almost everything in Rajas of the Ganges: Cards & Karma is tied to the three-of-a-kind rule: whenever a player has three ships numbered in ascending order, three matching buildings, all three different building types, etc., they get something. Most of the time, a player gets an Administrator card, cool bonus cards which can be turned into a bonus action, used as a die of any value and color, or exchanged for two cards as dice from the top of the draw deck.
Many cards earn instant rewards—coins, fame, or karma tokens (similar to the workers in The Castles of Burgundy). When a player gathers six coins from their actions, they get to flip one of their scoring cards. When they get three fame tokens—usually earned from buildings—they flip one of their scoring cards. The scoring cards are mainly used to track progress, but they also offer a bonus to the card’s owner, triggering additional actions.
Thankfully, all these bonuses happen fast. Faster still is the road to the endgame, when a player has flipped their third or fourth scoring card and only has to reach six to win. Gosh, the end of these games has proven to be tense every time, as someone notices that a player is right on the precipice of a victory but then earns an Administrator card to trigger a bonus turn right before the game comes to a close. One of my games ended in a tie-breaker, because a round always allows the players equal turns before play wraps up.
Both, Separately, Are Fun
Rajas of the Ganges: Cards & Karma is solid, and it now sits on the filler shelf of my game room. I was very surprised to report that even a hand of low pip cards can keep a player competitive. In some dice games, low pips mean big trouble, but not so here. That’s because goods cards are free, and some action cards require a value-one pip card. In a game where I had a hand of four one-pip cards, I openly complained about my terrible hand, until I found subtle ways to work those cards to the table with a mix of the changing card display and karma tokens used to boost dice values.
Ultimately, it’s about the combos, and Rajas of the Ganges: Cards & Karma has the combos in spades. I found myself using Administrator cards to extend turns in fun ways, and I reveled in snatching cards from the display before another player could use them to score a bunch of coins or fame tokens. (“Hate Draft: The Game” became a tagline in a three-player game with my review crew.) Even new players will be able to discover a path to glory thanks to the simple mechanics.
My issues with this game are minor, tied somewhat to maintenance and the wow factor. The poor soul who sits closest to the deck will be forced to deal new cards into the display a lot for such a short game. While it is certainly not difficult to place a number of cards into a tableau every few minutes, there is a lot of upkeep. Ditto for the turn structure; in a round, each player takes two turns, and on the second pass of those turns, the first player must flip a token over to remind them to take a karma token, which was forgotten on a sizable number of turns.
Some of the icons require mining the game’s rulebook, and I think Cards & Karma could have used a better, more detailed player aid to help players decipher these icons between turns. The included player aid mostly succeeds with using pictures to tell players what bonuses trigger when, but it proved less helpful than the game’s designers likely intended.
And while Rajas of the Ganges: Cards & Karma is good, it isn’t as strategically interesting as the base game thanks to the ever-changing card market. This, I get; these are two different game properties in the same universe. Still, those hoping for a streamlined version of the Rajas of the Ganges base game will need to look elsewhere. (My vote? Just look directly at Rajas of the Ganges at your retailer of choice and buy it, right now.)
Rajas of the Ganges: Cards & Karma was fun and a pleasant surprise. I have tried it with my family (including my eight-year-old) and with core hobbyists. The game went down well with everyone. Now I need to track down Rajas of the Ganges: The Dice Charmers to round out my experience with the collection!
Rajas of the Ganges: Cards & Karma details
- Designer: Inka Brand, Markus Brand
- Artists: Dennis Lohausen
- Publishers: Devir, HUCH!, R&R Games, Rebel Sp. z o.o., Swan Panasia Co., Ltd.
- Release Date: 2024
- Player count : 2 - 4
- Age range : 12+
- Time range : 30 - 45 minutes
- Mechanism(s):
- BGG Geek Rating: 7.23353 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 3.5.
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